Market Acceleration on Sustainable Forest-Derived Products from Forest Farmer Communities
Indonesia’s biggest challenge to tackle the deforestation rate has driven the urge to provide a sustainable natural resources management. This solution must cover all of the associated entities, specifically forest farmer communities who heavily depend their daily incomes on natural resources-derived products so they can get the financial boost to enter the broader premium market. As an answer to this challenge, SOBI (PT. Sosial Bisnis Indonesia), BLU Pusat P2H, and Telapak have initiated the tripartite cooperation to provide the better market access for sustainable forest-derived products from local farmers.
The market acceleration effort on sustainable forest-derived products from community-based cooperatives was redefined through information dissemination which was already held in three provinces in Indonesia, namely Surabaya (for West java), Solo (for Central Java), and Bandung (for West Java) on March 2018.
Information dissemination to local farmers was held to break down the information about marketing efforts acceleration to sell forest-derived products so the products would fetch a premium price in a broader premium market area. In this circumstance, BLU gives the provision on loan to cooperatives members corresponding to the delayed period of tree cutting warranted on the vegetation planted. BLU also supports and bridges communication with KTHR (forest farmer community) that includes information dissemination and local farmer involvement phase.
On the other side, SOBI would act as a market consolidator which promotes and connects sustainable wood-derived product as well as provides the technical assistance toward log certification (FSC) & capacity building using community-based cooperative. SOBI principles implement shared ownership and sustainable management to ensure the fair prices of products on the premium market. Meanwhile, Telapak would help on capacity building for the communities through social empowerment in building cooperatives for the easier and the more effective the certification process.
This scheme of the delayed cutting will encourage local farmers to implement FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) standard on their daily logging practice, so the economical demands and sustainable-based principles are met.
Parallel with implementing the sustainability standard, the delayed cutting mechanism would create a better quality on the wood harvested because of the plant’s state of readiness to be cut down. Once the products reach the better access to the market and fetch the premium price, farmers would get the assurance for the return of credits.
Since the beginning of BLU’s loan provision in 2013 until this current time, there are 14 thousand of participants partaking and profiting in this program. The loan provided has guaranteed around the estimated of 15 million trees on the edge of standing-still phase before they are processed downstream and harvested.
In regard to the information dissemination conducted, it is hoped that the farmer communities would grasp the better opportunity on premium market through a wise-manner forest utilization and management while still preserving the forest and upgrading their lives with a continuous return in form of profit.
